I AM CAUGHT BEHIND THE FORMER IRON CURTAIN, AND MY POSTS CAN'T GET OUT.

I'LL TRY AGAIN NEXT WEEK FROM FRANCE.

SORRY 'BOUT THAT

Are People Really That Stupid?Fortunately, the answer to the above question is usually "No." However, people do enough fairly-stupid to seriously-stupid things to keep the rest of us entertained most of the time. Unfortunately, the human race is in the middle of doing a couple of really stupid things that may result in wiping ourselves off the face of the planet. Given this scenario, the blogger might be forgiven if the subjects he covers range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Feel free to join in. Maybe you'll say something smart.

I'm in Mexico right now, where they eat all sorts of interesting things.
The chapulines (fried grasshoppers ) of Oaxaca, for example. Apparently, when
harvested at the right time in their life cycle and fried with garlic, lime,
salt, and an extract of agave worms, grasshoppers are quite tasty. Pardon me if
I'm not rushing to the table.

It has always been a bit of a joke for people of one culture to offer their
favourite "delicacy" to strangers of another culture, and watch them swallow
their disgust and eat it. It makes you wonder. Why do people eat such strange
things anyway?It seems to me that there are three reasons for eating
something:

One: I Like It

Some things are just tasty. Substances like sugar, chocolate, and potato chips
probably taste good to 99% of people the first time they eat them. An inherited
survival trait that sort of works, but not very well, I have always thought.
Especially when you think of what sugar does to us.

Two: I Like it Because I'm Starving, or, "Hunger is the best sauce to any
meal"

Some food you learn to like because you have to. One of the major drawbacks
to hunter-gatherer societies is the difficulty in preserving the plenty for
times of famine. So they develop ways of preserving food, usually involving
salt, alcohol, or spices. These methods may keep the food edible, but they often
do strange things to the taste and texture. If you are a starving hunter or
subsistence farmer in late winter, anything that sustains you and doesn't make
you sick is a bonus.

So societies have created ways to pickle cabbage (German saurkraut and
Korean kim chee) salt fish and other meats (Portugese cod, Norwegian kippers,
Jewish or Irish corned beef), and ferment an incredible number of things (Korean
crab meat. I've tried that one. It's putrid.) A few of these methods may have
created a pleasant flavour, but for all of them, taste was secondary.

And then there's the habit of sticking things into the ground and leaving
them for several months before you dig them up. Presumably you don't eat
anything else while the months pass, in order to get up enough appetite to
actually push some of this stuff past your nose. Chinese "hundred year old" duck
eggs, fish heads, you name it.

You might imagine, after a few months of famine, a group of starving people
pawing through their own garbage dump, saying, "You know, this doesn't taste too
bad. Let's remember it for next year…"

Storage methods aside, in seriously inhospitable terrain, you learn to eat
whatever presents itself. The Aboriginies of Australia subsist on a large
percentage of insects, a good source of protein.

So, with that amazing adaptability of the human race, the people of those
societies developed a taste for these foods, created a cuisine around them, and
now fiercely defend their piquancy against the derision of foreigners.

So the second type of food is the sort you learn to like: clotted cow's
blood from Tanzania, snipe pickled in seal skin from the Inuit of Canada.
Necessity being the mother of invention.

Three: I Like It Because You Don't

There is a third level of food though: the food that nobody has to eat.
This is the stuff that people put in their mouths to show off, like the American
guy who ate a bicycle. (Of course, that's not cultural. It's plain crazy) Live
octopus in Korea. Students swallowing live goldfish in America. For that matter,
I've always been suspicious of people eating live oysters. I mean, what's the
pleasure? They swallow them whole, and all they taste is brine.

And then there's "hot" food. Nobody argues the benefits of spicy food,
especially in warm climates, where its antibiotic properties and preservative
qualities are well known. However, there is "spicy" and then there is "painful."
I can't see any reason for eating anything that hurts, unless it's to show
off.

Fugu, the toxic blowfish that kills 300 people a year in Japan, is another
one. Not much doubt about the ego benefits, there.

Not that this should matter to anyone, of course. People can eat what they
like. People can show off any way they like. Some of these foods are just plain
fun. Apparently "civet coffee", the beans of which have passed through the
digestive tract of civets, is quite tasty. Good old Canadian prairie oysters
(what's left over from steer-creating operations) are probably decent food, if
you don't think about the effect on the donors too much.

However, I am rather suspicious of the motives of the gourmands who eat
these obnoxious foods. One well-studied and less-beneficial habit of humans is
the tendency to form an elite group and create a difficult set of initiation rites
to limit membership in the club. I suspect many of these foods perform that
function.

It is only when people start looking down their noses at others who aren't
interested that it becomes a negative element in society. I don't think anyone
should be pressured to eat anything, drink anything, or perform any unpleasant
act under the guise of fitting in or showing respect for someone else's culture.
Face it, people who eat these strange things know damn well that other people
find them distasteful. If they cry cultural bias because you won't play their
game, they're setting you up on purpose.

You can eat anything you want, drink anything you want; just don't expect
me to.

Sorry Indiana Jones fans, but eating the brains of live monkeys is a
legend. Eating live shrimp while they wriggle is not. Nor is deep-frying part of
a fish, and eating it while the rest of the fish is still alive. Why? "So that
the customer knows the fish is fresh." Sure.

Some of these practices get into trouble on ethical grounds, and many of
them have recently been banned in their countries of origin. Which gives you
some idea of their actual cultural value. Yes, the human race is growing
up.

But don't even start on the incredibly stupid things men will eat in a vain
(in both senses of the word) attempt to increase their virility. Well, maybe we
aren't growing up very fast.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:

Gordon A. Long is a semi-retired teacher living in
Delta, British Columbia. There he indulges his life-long interests in writing,
theater, photography, travel, dogs, and sailing (not necessarily in that
order).

He also runs Airborn Press and helps beginning writers with
editing, proofreading, designing, publishing and marketing their books. His
business experience includes providing technical and management services in the
theatrical and convention field for forty years, from school and amateur
theatre all the way up to the 2010 Olympics.

Has he invested in the Stock Market? Yes. Was he successful? Yes. Did he
make a killing? Not a chance. He isn't that smart. Or that stupid.